“Fuck Love Street Records,” Trey said, pretty much like I expected he would, though he didn’t sound all that pissed. “Fuck David Woo. And fuck Jesse Mayes. You come with me, I’ll make it real sweet for you, brother.” He flashed me the killer smile that had earned him all the mad cash as a model, massive dimples and all. “You know this. No other exec will love you like I do. You want cash, cars… pussy? I’ll make it rain, baby.”
“I don’t doubt you will.”
“And by the way, you see Jesse Mayes, you tell him I send my love. And you tell him to come see me.”
I chuckled.
“So, where’re you staying?” he asked. “You at Cary’s again?”
“Yeah. Poolhouse out back.”
“So how come I never get invited over to the Playboy Mansion of the north?”
“It’s not exactly party central. It’s pretty quiet over there these days.”
“It’s just the two of you?”
“No. His sister’s there, too. Actually, Larissa was hanging with her by the pool today, when I was heading out…” I faded off.
A strange smile was spreading across Trey’s face. No dimples, though. This time, it showed in his eyes more than anything, and I didn’t like the look of it.
“What?”
“Oooh, Courteney Clarke.” He gave a low whistle. “Damn. Shoulda known.”
“Known what?”
“That something really fucking sweet must’ve put that sour-assed look on your face. Tell Dr. Jones about it, brother. That little honey giving you grief?”
“Why would she?”
He laughed. “You forget me, man. I know you. And I’ve seen her.”
Yeah, he’d seen her. He’d met her, probably many times, over the last couple of years. His sister, Larissa, seemed pretty tight with her.
But the idea of Trey looking at Courteney with anything close to the look he was giving me now… it made my molars fucking vibrate. My jaw involuntarily clenched.
I tried to shut him down with a look and Trey just smiled, like the goddamn Cheshire Cat. With dimples.
“She still got those beauties…?” He plucked his left nipple through his shirt—and fucking laughed at whatever he saw on my face.
“No,” I said, dead cold. “She doesn’t.”
“A’ight, I feel you. You don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“You know I’m fucking kidding. What is she, in high school?”
“Just graduated.”
“I rest my fucking case.” Then he got serious; office tower Trey was back. “You want some more advice… never shit where you eat. And never, I mean fucking never, date a teenager. Nice to look at, but you’d rather peel off your own fingernails than make conversation. There is just nothing upstairs but bullshit and drama. And that’s if you get a smart one. Tried it once. Nineteen-year-old honey, like the second coming of Michelle Goddamn Pfeiffer. Lasted about two weeks before I had to jet. I’m telling you. Leave the girls to the boys… and find yourself a woman.”
“A nineteen-year-old isn’t a woman?”
“Shit, no. You know I prefer my ladies thirty and up. Minimum. The more mature, the better. Older women know where it’s at. No head games.”
“Uh-huh. So over thirty… that’s the recipe for success?”
“Ain’t no recipe, Xan. It’s freestyle out here. Met this little Brazilian honey just the other day, definitely gonna be seeing her again. She’s twenty-six. But everyone’s got their favorite flavor, that’s all I’m saying. A man who knows himself wins the game.”
“Noted.”
He snickered. “Just make sure your flavor isn’t your best friend’s little sister, you’ll be alright.”
“It’s not.”
“Good on you.”
Fuck me.
The fucker didn’t even believe me.
“So. You wanna meet me at the Ruby later tonight?” he asked, eying me. “I’ll introduce you to some real nice ladies over thirty…”
“I think I’m busy,” I muttered.
Trey laughed.
* * *
I avoided going back to the house until the middle of the night.
When I drove through the gate, I tried to ease the Vette up the driveway as slowly and quietly as I could, and parked next to Courteney’s car.
In the afternoon, I’d taken myself shopping. I’d made Jordan come with me, though eventually she pretty much told me to fuck off and go home because I was annoying her. She said I was “stress shopping again.”
She always said that.
At least I’d scored a few new shirts out of it. So sue me, I liked clothes.
None of my male friends were exactly gonna shop with me. Half the reason I kept an assistant on payroll—or at least this assistant—was for the shopping. Jo wasn’t the clothes hound I was, but she had a great eye for what looked best on me. I paid her well, so she took my shopping “addiction”—as she called it—in stride. It was part of the deal.
She knew this.
After I’d dropped her at her apartment, I met up with friends for dinner. Then a couple of drinks with my buddy-slash-bodyguard, Lucas… and watched the clock tick.
I figured by two in the morning, the coast would be clear.
I pulled the shopping bags out of my car, and as I made my way around the house and across the backyard to the poolhouse, I looked up at Courteney’s window. The curtain was closed, but her light was on.
I pictured her lying on her bed, the way she was the other day when I burst into her room…
And I wondered if her door was locked.
Jesus, something was wrong with my head.
I dropped my bags in the poolhouse and hit the shower.
Trey was right. Uncomfortably direct about it, but right.
Any sane man knew you didn’t screw around with someone you couldn’t just brush off if it didn’t work out. That was in the Single Dude’s Handbook, right next to the page about never messing around with your best friend’s little sister behind his back.
And at thirty years old—almost thirty-one—you definitely didn’t want to be lusting after an eighteen-year-old.
What good could come of that?
Hot sex, maybe. Then you brushed it off before she got clingy, right?
But there would be no casual sex for me and Courteney Clarke.
That possibility would never be on the table.
So why was I even thinking about it?
Looking at her that way…?
And why was it bugging me so much that she hated me?
Yup. That was a fact. I fucking hated it that she couldn’t stand me anymore.
You made it this way.
You scared her, good—and that’s how it should be.
You’re here for Cary.
I told myself to take an example from Trey’s playbook. The guy might bust my balls about it, but no way he’d touch Courteney, even if he wanted to, if she was his best friend’s little sister.
No way he’d pull that shit I’d pulled on her in my car three weeks ago.
He’d probably even find some way to talk to her about what happened—about Joseph Fetterman’s death.
Be there for her.
Listen. Support.
Look out for her when Cary couldn’t.
Because that’s what best friends did, right? They stayed fucking trustworthy. They had your back.
They didn’t fantasize about boning your baby sister behind your back.
Like when, exactly, had I started letting myself think those things about her, anyway?
That night in my car?
Before that?
Yeah, definitely somewhere before that. Like maybe somewhere around that time I came home from tour, and she suddenly had tits.
Fantastic, juicy, bouncy, fucking perfect tits.
And enough attitude to go with them.
It was like she’d grown up overnight, and suddenly I didn’t see Cary’s l
ittle sister. I saw this smoking hot woman… who wasn’t really a woman.
She was sixteen.
And she was still Cary’s little sister.
It was enough to make me turn my attention elsewhere—fucking fast—and just go the fuck on with my life.
Had a new album to record, anyway, more touring to do. A lot more touring. As a new and barely successful band, Steel Trap toured more and worked harder than a lot of musicians I knew in much bigger bands.
And no matter how successful you weren’t, at every level, there were always women.
Coming out to the shows. Backstage. Every party, every bar you walked into.
At least there were for me.
The more women I was with, the easier it got to convince myself that whatever happened that night when Courteney was sixteen and I ran into her at a party, and I didn’t even recognize her for about half a lust-charged minute…
It didn’t mean anything.
The fact that the girl I’d once thought of as a little girl actually made my dick take notice at a party…
It didn’t mean anything.
It was just a moment, a weird blip in my sexual history that meant about as much as randomly having the face of someone you weren’t even attracted to pop into your head in the middle of sex.
The brain worked in mysterious ways, right?
She was pretty. She had nice tits.
She grew up.
I noticed.
It really didn’t mean anything.
I went on with my life.
I went on fucking other women.
Occasionally, her face popped into my head when I was fucking those women.
It still didn’t mean anything.
But here was the really, truly fucked-up part.
Since I’d fucked that stripper, the same night I had that messed-up fight with Courteney in my car, three weeks ago?
I hadn’t fucked anyone.
I’d told myself I needed a break. A little sexbbatical. The equipment wasn’t working right; I’d barely even been able to get off with that chick.
All the bullshit with my band, the stress, was getting to me.
I needed to hit the pause button on everything—including women—and get my head right. Just shut everything else out for a little while so I could focus on making the next move I needed to make. Make the decision to leave my band and commit to it, follow through with it.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make.
I told myself all the weird sex shit—Courteney popping into my head while I was fucking that stripper… and all the other times she’d popped into my head over the last two years…
It was the stress.
I wasn’t thinking straight.
But since she’d moved into Cary’s a few days ago and we were suddenly practically living together? I’d barely been able to think about anything other than Courteney Clarke.
And now here I was… jerking off in the shower, thinking about her.
I wasn’t thinking about fucking her, exactly, as my hand worked my dick and I closed my eyes. I was just thinking about her… all this bullshit between us. I barely realized what I was doing. I knew I’d started jerking off, but I didn’t exactly pause to examine what I was thinking about while I did it.
Or why I’d gotten so damn hard just standing here in the middle of the night, fucking aggravated and thinking about her.
I came with a ridiculous, pent-up growl of frustration. I slapped my hand against the wet tile wall, and I tried to catch my breath. And it really hit me—that I hadn’t fucked anything other than my hand in almost a month.
Fuck.
There was something… undone between the two of us. Something unfinished.
Something that could never be done or finished, because it couldn’t be.
I toweled off and flopped into bed. Exhausted. Still aggravated. Halfway disgusted with myself, and not because I wanted her.
Because I was so damn weak for her.
Shit… I needed to see Cary.
I needed to look him in his eyes—so fucking much like his sister’s—and get that cold dose of reality. To remind me what I was doing here.
For once in your life, you’re gonna be the good guy.
You’re gonna be Best Friend of the Goddamn Year.
Which means you’re gonna leave her the fuck alone.
I picked up my phone to message him. Maybe if we hung out tomorrow… he could finally play me what he’d been working on. The new album.
But when I looked at the screen, there was a text message from Courteney.
Courteney: Let me know when you get home and have a minute. I need to talk to you.
I actually had to read it twice to convince myself it was real. But there she was, in her hoodie, smiling at me from the little thumbnail photo. The message was sent about forty minutes ago.
I looked over at my window. My room was dark and my shades were drawn partway. But I could see the slice of light around the edge of the drapes in her window.
I texted her back.
Me: I’m home.
Then I got up and got dressed, quick, in case she texted back. Because yeah, I was weak.
Courteney: Meet me by the pool.
I went out to the pool, but she wasn’t there. The curtain on her window was still closed.
I sat on the edge of one of the lounge chairs and waited for her in the near-dark. Small, golden lanterns hung around the backyard and the pool; they went on at dusk, and they were glowing now. I was pretty sure I’d be able to see her coming.
But I heard her before I saw her. A door opening at the back of the house, one of the ones off the living room. Her bare feet whispering on the stone path between the trees.
She came over and sat on the edge of a lounge chair, two over from mine. She was sort of facing me but not looking at me. She stared at the pool.
It was July, but even in the peak of summer Vancouver often cooled off at night. She was wearing jeans and one of her trademark oversized hoodies, with the hood down. Her long hair was down around her shoulders.
Courteney didn’t wear much makeup, and she didn’t seem to be wearing any now. The lantern light gave her hair and skin an angelic glow. Her full, pouty lips were frowning a little. And I heard Trey’s smart-ass voice in my head.
That little honey giving you grief?
“I just need to make one thing clear.” Her voice was soft in the night.
“Okay.”
“I hate you.”
Finally, she looked at me. Her face was pretty blank, other than that slight frown. Her guard was up around me. Way up. And I knew why.
We were both there, in my car, just three weeks ago. And I’d made an impression on her that night that she wouldn’t soon forget.
The whole story blazed in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”
“Good.”
“You didn’t always hate me, though.”
Why I had to poke her like that, I didn’t know. It was an automatic response, like breathing.
“I was a child,” she said flatly. “Children are dumb.”
“Courteney—”
“Can you just steer clear when my friends are around? I’m living here, too. You’ll leave again on tour, but this is my home now.”
“Your home?” I repeated. “For how long?”
“That’s none of your business.” She looked away. “And I don’t know how long. As long as I need to be.”
“And… how will you know when that is?”
She didn’t answer that.
“So you’re really working for Cary now? You think that’s a good idea?”
She didn’t respond.
“What about college?”
“It’s none of your business what I think or what I do,” she said. “And I don’t care what you do. Just don’t do it with my friends, okay?”
I studied her, but she wouldn’t look at me. Her shoulders were tight and there was a little
crease between her eyebrows. She was really worked up about this idea she’d gotten in her head—that I was gonna be an asshole around her friends?
“Okay,” I said.
She got up to leave.
“I called you last week.”
She stopped in her tracks.
“I wanted to let you know… about Joseph Fetterman.”
She turned to face me and actually looked me in the eye. “I already heard,” she said, like that excused the fact that she didn’t answer or return my call.
Or send me a fucking courtesy text to acknowledge my existence.
“I wanted you to hear it from me,” I told her. “Or from someone you know, not on social media or wherever.”
She sat back down. “Gabe’s dad called my parents or something. Dad told me. I think he tried to call Cary but… you know how that goes.” She searched my face, like maybe I was withholding something from her. “Does Cary know?”
“Yeah, he knows.”
“How did he take it?”
“I don’t know. He won’t talk about it.”
She went silent for a long moment. “I think he’ll be okay,” she said, but it lacked conviction.
Obviously, she was concerned about her brother. She wasn’t admitting it to me, but that had to be why she was here. Why she’d moved in, taken this job.
I rested my elbows on my knees, leaning in a bit, and looked her in the eye. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I’m fine.”
I stared at her. She returned my gaze, guarded.
I knew she was eighteen, but there were moments, to me, when Courteney Clarke had always seemed way too grown-up for her age.
Ever since she was fourteen, anyway, and the world she’d known flipped upside-down on a dime. A world where her friends and family were safe, and nothing horrendous could suddenly happen to them.
No fourteen-year-old should have to go through that.
But she did.
And she pretty much did it on her own.
I knew, deep down, no matter how much I loved the guy, I’d probably never be able to forgive Cary for that.
“I’m not calling you a liar, okay?” I said, gently. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated.
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 7
